Stephen wrote:Do you suggest that this phenomenon might be caused by cosmic rays and therefore invalid the astrophysical argument regarding strangelets production?

They might be caused by cosmic-ray impacts, I don't think "stranglets" exist, I do believe a chain-reaction that smashes nuclei could be possible, anyway even Cosmic-ray air showers are a chain-reaction, but not autocatalytic.

Kasuha wrote:And particles don't collide the same way 'real world' objects do. They act more like when galaxies collide - they rather simply pass through each other, pulling strings of unbalanced forces on which new particles materialize because of quantum effects. Whatever materializes there has pretty good chance to not be exactly in the middle of the string and therefore speeding out of the collision place at almost speed of light.

After the discussion about the terrorists I rented the movie The Kite Runner yesterday. I had to think about the above comment, when the kids battled, and tried to cut the stings of each others kite. Made me think of flying particles
Check it out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYCLyNvFSDs

Dance, even if you have nowhere to do it but your own living room.Wear Sunscreen by Baz Luhrmann - Mary Schmich

Could the "Transient lunar phenomenon" be caused by the impact of "Ultra-high-energy cosmic rays" who create an explosion? Because there are cosmic ray air-showers in the atmosphere, but there is no significant one on the moon. So these high energetic particles could perhaps cause a rock-scattering event, that might be autocatalytic for a fraction of a second, generating the flash, vaporizing a noble gas such as radon, and generating dust clouds.

This is an interesting hypothesis. In a sense cosmic rays do scatter volatiles. This is actually the basis for instruments looking on LRO orbiting the Moon right now. Transient phenomena, however, require an event that would generate an optically detectable cloud (true LTP's). Cosmic rays are not localized enough to cause this. At least one LTP released C2 that was measured by a spectrometer. Other transient gas releases (measured by instruments onboard Apollo and Lunar Prospector missions) occurred in certain areas. This is not likely the case for cosmic rays.

btw, LRO is the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and there is an interesting report about it's mission and Cosmic Rays :

LRO's Crater instrument is measuring the amount of space radiation at the moon to help determine the level of protection required for astronauts during lengthy expeditions on the moon or to other solar system destinations. "This surprising solar minimum, or quiet period for the sun regarding magnetic activity, has led to the highest level of space radiation in the form of Galactic Cosmic Rays, or GCRs, fluxes and dose rates during the era of human space exploration," said Harlan Spence, Crater principal investigator of Boston University and the University of New Hampshire, Durham. "The rarest events – cosmic rays with enough energy to punch through the whole telescope – are seen once per second, nearly twice higher than anticipated. Crater radiation measurements taken during this unique, worst-case solar minimum will help us design safe shelters for astronauts."

GCRs are electrically charged particles – electrons and atomic nuclei – moving at nearly the speed of light into the solar system. Magnetic fields carried by the solar wind deflect many GCRs before they approach the inner solar system. However, the sun is in an unusually long and deep quiet period, and the interplanetary magnetic fields and solar wind pressures are the lowest yet measured, allowing an unprecedented influx of GCRs.

Scientists expected the level of GCRs to drop as LRO got closer to the moon for its mapping orbit. This is because GCRs come from all directions in deep space, but the moon acts as a shield, blocking the particles behind it across about half the sky in close lunar proximity. However, the rate did not drop as much as expected. "This is likely due to interactions between the Galactic Cosmic Rays and the lunar surface," said Spence. "The primary GCRs produce secondary radiation by shattering atoms in the lunar surface material; the lunar surface then becomes a significant secondary source of particles, and the resulting radiation dose is thereby 30-40 percent higher than expected."

Cosmic rays also originate closer to home, from stormy magnetic activity on the sun. The sun goes through a cycle of activity, approximately 11 years long, from quiet to stormy and back again. During stormy periods, events like solar flares, magnetic explosions in the sun's atmosphere, propel charged particles to high speeds. "We're eager to see a big solar flare, so we can evaluate the hazards from solar-generated cosmic rays, but we'll probably have to wait a couple years until the sun wakes up," said Spence. http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/LRO/n ... -2009.html

Dance, even if you have nowhere to do it but your own living room.Wear Sunscreen by Baz Luhrmann - Mary Schmich

Thank you for writing about your interesting question. I presume you contacted me on the basis of our paper, Cheng, Y.-S., T. D. Holmes, T. G. George, W. H. Marlow. 2005. Size measurement of plutonium particles from internal sputtering in air. Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research B 234, 219-225 link. There, closely related questions are discussed, and certainly citation of R. McFarlane’s earlier paper on impact desorption is mentioned as part of the motivation for the work and its interpretation.

I am uncertain what you mean when you suggest “rock-scattering event that might be autocatalytic.” With the unattenuated energies of cosmic rays on the surface of the moon, there is ample energy available for solid surface rearrangement or disruption and heating, which will clearly facilitate radon desorption and likely dispersal of the regolith materials you mention. Desorption is known to occur at the much lower energies of decay products. At the even lower energy of nuclear recoil from alpha decay, I believe volatilization of Pu occurred in our experiments and was responsible for what we observed, as I tried to explain in the paper. Indeed, putting these facts together was the reason I termed the entire process “internal sputtering.” For the case you are interested in, the processes more resembles conventional (“external”) Sputtering.

As a simple suggestion, you might estimate the effects that would be developed in a solid (the regolith) due to impact of a cosmic ray on the lunar surface. Limiting cases would be complete thermalization of that energy due to its deposition in a volume corresponding to a cube with the penetration depth as a side. Another limit would be the channeling of the energy into surface energy of particles created created by the impact. These would provide some kind of boundaries on what might occur.

Dance, even if you have nowhere to do it but your own living room.Wear Sunscreen by Baz Luhrmann - Mary Schmich

Since nuclear fission is possible, due to an assymetrie between the strong-force and the electro/weak-force (for short distances the strong force is stronger for longer distances electro/weak is stronger and for very large distances gravity even exeeed electro/weak). Fission works in that way that neutrons and protons in a nucleus are rumbled in a way that their distance overcomes the critical distance where electro/weak- exeeds strong-force thus the repelling electrowaek force will tear the nucleus apart.
Such an effect is also thinkable for protons instead of the nucleus and quarks insted of the protons and neutrons, since also strong-force holds the quarks together and since the quarks are also charged particles where 2 of them have the same charge there is also a repelling electro/weak-force trying to tear the proton apart (for the neutron it even works but also without chainreaction).

There are only 2 facts what make such an scenario very unlikely:

1. other then in the nucleus where there are only positive and neutral charged particles (protons and neutrons) in the protons (and also in the neutrons) there are positive aqnd negative charged quarks together only in the neutron theese charges total to 0 units (2/3 + 2*(-1/3)=0) and in the proton they total to +1 unit (2*(2/3)+(-1/3)=3/3=1). Thus there are not only repelling electroweak-forces but always also electro/weak-forces pulling the particles together what in my eyes even without the strong force should be as stable as atoms and ions alway containing positiv and negative charges in some relationship.

2. for fission the energy relesed by one decaying atom is far less than the energy contained in the restmass of the atom (only about 1/1000 of the energyas far as I know), but the energy to trigger the decay of the next atom is also much less than its restmass, so a chainreaction is possible. There is as stated above no mechanism which releasesmore energy by any chemicalor physical process than is contained in the restmass of the particlestaking part, usually it is rather much less. There is also no known effect to trigger the decay of a proton or a neutron in such a way that all its restmassenergy is released using only energys smaller than the restmass of one of theese particles, even energys much larger than the restmass of the proton did not yet trigger a spontanious decay of a proton. Sure the LHC is build to destroy protons by their collission, but such a destruction of a proton up to now never resulted in energys large4 enoug to destruct other protons, even if there is an avalange (like when cosmic particles hit the athmosphere) the energy becoms less in every step and the avalange stops after a very short time.

Also the analogy of the balloon and the needle doesn't work here:
If you have a room full of balloons and destroy one with a needle the distruction of this one balloon will never trigger the pontanious distractuion of othr balloons.

But we always have to keep in mind even the scientists who build the LHC hoping for finding something which nobody can even think of up to now, somthing beyond the standard modle. If not it will become very boring for them after they find the higgs and proven the standard modell for correct there is nothing left to do for them if that is all and nothing beyond. So everyone hopes for something newbeyond the standard modell, but nobody can even guess what it will be and for everything nobody knows there is always an equal chance to find something dangerous or bad as for finding somthing helpful, that is just part of the game. Unfortunately there is also no other way to find out if something is harmful than to just look for it and try to reduce the consequences. Teh only alternative to that is to say: "This is it! we better not look for anything new any longer because it could be harmful.".
If there is anyreason for living just enjoying and not looking for anythin new could not be mine.

"There are only 2 facts what make such an scenario very unlikely …"

It has come to my mind that there's a 3rd fact that comes into play that could make it likely:

So the question is getting more energy out of Protons than apparently put in.

Now for nuclear fission a neutron is added and the Atom splits. What’s used is enriched uranium which is a type of uranium in which the percent composition of uranium-235 has been increased through the process of isotope separation.

For a (chemical) fire there’s something similar happening, the wood is first dried out by the Sun and so the flashpoint is much lower, the same for the distillation of gasoline out of crude oil.

What I’m saying is that a lot of work/energy has been put into both materials at forehand before they became easily ‘combustible’.

That’s in line with my worry/argument of long, high frequency and density of particle collisions at the LHC vs Cosmic Rays in nature. A high series of collisions could strain out surrounding Protons through Gravity Wave vibrations, like with a glass that can burst due to high pitch sound vibrations … the final (small) wave causes the snapping of the bonds … so the Protons can releasing more energy than put in at the end.

Of course we haven't seen a Proton ever 'snap' but we also have never so much energy into them as we are doing now, charging them up.

Dance, even if you have nowhere to do it but your own living room.Wear Sunscreen by Baz Luhrmann - Mary Schmich

chriwi is missing the most obvious one: There is no possible reaction. What would the process be? Proton -> what? Every possible result has more energy than a proton.
This is different for fission, where the fission products are lighter than the original nucleus.